The Capitals and the World

Since arriving in Queensland we have stayed in 2 Capitals of Australia: the Rodeo Capital (Mt Isa) and the Dinosaur Capital (Richmond) as well as a city whose slogan is ‘the World’ (Charters Towers). In Mt Isa there were signs showing distances to various localities around Australia and the World. We realized that, if only there were roads, we could have reached London or Washington in the distance we have traveled around Australia so far.

The Rodeo was on when we reached the Isa so we had to go. It was a little different to the Fitzroy Crossing rodeo: the bulls all had names and knew where to exit the arena after their run and there was a program of events that changed every 15 to 20 minutes. At Fitzroy Crossing we were told the bull riding would be on after lunch, “what time” we asked and the reply was “after lunch” which turned out to be around 4pm. The bulls there were out of the scrub and they had to run in a herd of steers to get them out of the ring.

We tried our hand at mining at the Hard

Time mine in Mt Isa and visited an underground hospital that was built after the bombing of Darwin during World War II.

At Richmond it was a tour of the Dinosaur Museum then a field trip to one of the fossicking sites. We came back to the museum to have our finds assessed, we thought we had found a dinosaur tooth and a fossilized leaf but they turned out to be a stone and a scrape made by a grader. We did however find fossilized fish scales and shells.

In Charters Towers we have toured the town by car and foot and inspected many of the impressive buildings of the gold rush era. Joy paned for gold and found a few specks.